i understand the "dough" part of "doughnut"

"no you're not.  you love her? how long have you been hanging out?  not long.  no you're not." - the louder half of an overheard conversation between a realist and an idealist

this is where the kid i babysit keeps his pair of khaki pants

"life as death-in-waiting"

the one time of day that i get to interact with my beta fish named william is when i feed him breakfast.

i like to feed william his breakfast while i eat mine.  william always eats the same wardley's premium beta fish food.  i always eat nature's path organic optimum power blueberry cinnamon flax cereal with unsweetened soy milk.  our breakfasts don't look so different (and they both contain wheat flour).  the main way to distinguish between them is that i eat mine sitting down with a spoon while reading the new yorker, and william eats his mostly by waiting for the pellets to disintegrate then scooping the dust up with his mouth once it has sunk to the bottom of his tank.

william and i don't talk much while we eat breakfast together because neither of us are very much morning creatures.

sometimes, while i am eating my cereal and reading the new yorker, i wonder if william even realizes that he is not eating his breakfast alone.  i wonder if he even realizes that there is a person one thousand times his size sitting next to him who is also trying to get a health start to their day.  and not only is that person eating with him, but that person is also the person who fed him and the person who spent two dollars and ninety-nine cents on a container of wardley's premium beta fish food for him--and will spend another two dollars and ninety-nine cents on another container of wardley's premium beta fish food when the first container runs out in what will seemingly take about three years.

then i wonder if william will survive to see the day when the first container becomes empty. 

this thought makes me sad.  so i stop thinking about william and go back to reading about lunar planet biology or the origins of greek yogurt or female lingerie saleswomen in saudi arabia or whatever news is being covered in that weeks issue of the new yorker.

the other main occasion when i get to interact with william is when i clean his tank.  william seems to hate it when i clean his tank.  he seems to hate it more than most humans hate going to the dentist or studying for a math test or being broken up with.  he always hates it as if it is the first time.  

it is during these cleanings that i am glad to know that beta fish have an memory span of about three seconds.

--

" a person's life consists of a collectin of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. "

jealousy is the feeling you get when you see women wearing burkas in the wintertime.